


collapsed coffins

by afearsomecritter (jsaer)



Series: harrowed clayton [1]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series), UnDeadwood (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Episode 4 spoilers, Harrowed!Clayton, Hurt/Comfort, Temporary Character Death, UnDeadwood Mini-series (Critical Role)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-24
Updated: 2019-12-01
Packaged: 2021-02-18 06:53:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21540190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jsaer/pseuds/afearsomecritter
Summary: "harrowed": meaning 'dragged from the earth'. (He wakes up in a coffin)
Series: harrowed clayton [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1606087
Comments: 27
Kudos: 139





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So Episode 4 was amazing and brutal and ouch and Brian gave us a world and game system where zombies and undead are canon so this happened. Thanks again to the UnDeadwood discord for letting me ramble about this at them basically since ep 4 ended y'all are the best enablers

\----------

"Everything felt so clear. Simple. Shoulda known better, nothing ever is."

(the words are muffled and faint, heard through feet of soil and wood)

A strange noise, not quite a laugh.

"I can't quite apologize, justice is justice and I think, I think you knew it was coming for you. I do apologize that it was me, after everything. You seemed like a good man."

(dirt shifted, like someone was standing)

"Good night, Mister Sharpe."

\--

He wakes up in a coffin.

(this will be funny much later)

He wakes up in a coffin and his chest hurts. 

He wakes up in the dark and he has no air to scream. 

Everything hurts (shuddering pulses of agony in his heart his gut) and some corner of his mind that isn't just screaming thinks that's not fair. He lashes out.

Wood cracks.

His hands hurt and he is (not) breathing dirt. 

He is laying in the dirt, coughing blood and earth and inhaling cold air, and facing a wooden grave marker.

_Amos Kinsley_  
aka  
Clayton "The Coffin" Sharpe 

The words are awkwardly carved, but carefully formed all the same. He stares at the marker where he dug out of the ground-out of the coffin, and hurts and shakes. 

(-that’s not fair, to hurt, the dead aren't supposed-)

 _Coffin,_ he thinks, something high and keening building in his throat.

_Hell of a name_

(thin high threads of laughter choke him to go with the soil he's already coughing up)

There are splinters of his moniker under his nails, and he can't stop laughing-

(if the laughter turns to something else, as he curls on the ground, there's no one alive around to know)

\--

The church is the closest building to the graveyard.

This is by design, of course, hallowed (ha) ground and all.

(he thinks he can feel his heartbeat, fluttering in his chest, thinks he can hear his blood rushing-that the ringing in his ears isn't from scarcely blotted out terror)

The Reverend will be the closest, he thinks, Mason had better still have that fucking shotgun.

( _Matthew_ he thinks first, and the low baritone murmuring a prayer for a soul still there)

He doesn't _think_ he's a snake in a skin suit, got no wounds other than the ones that-

He doesn't have any snake bites, and he sure as shit don't feel warm enough inside to fuckin steam.

He doesn't think but-

(Arabella crying, her sister's skull with a new hole it in, Aloysius's warm eyes gone flat and empty, pain in his gut and ches-)

He's decided he wants to be less of a gambling man.

\--

The man previously known as Amos Kinsley is halfway up the stairs to the church’s living quarters before he remembers that the Reverend had been staying at the Bullock Hotel.

His feet carry his the rest of the way up anyway, wood creaking in the night air. The church looks to be in good shape, actually, skeleton no longer bared to the breeze. Reverend must’ve put that money to use right quick. 

(the town ain’t lit up like there’s dead in the street anymore, and he refuses to think too hard about how easy it is to see)

He stands in front of the door, swaying slightly (he hurts and he’s tired any none of this should apply) and staring at whitewashed wood and trying to convince himself that knocking on the door to an empty fuckin room is a grand old idea when the door swings open.

\--

Matthew thinks it’s another late night death, with someone come to get the preacher on account of no one wanting the dead buried without rites these recent weeks. It’s near God da-near routine now, and he’s already shrugging on his coat when he hears the sound of footsteps on the stairs.

(he doesn’t sleep easy, these days, doesn’t sleep deep, doesn’t think about the sound of a gunshot like the crack of a broken neck and blood on the dusty ground)

So he opens the door before the knock and comes face to face with a ghost.

\--

“Evenin’” Clayton rasps, something wound hard and tight inside his chest going loose at the sight of an apparently unharmed Reverend.

(he still didn’t know where Aloysius had found his poster, didn’t know if there’d been another one of the man standing in front of him and if he’d been ne-)

The Reverend (dressed, oddly enough) blinks at him, and then goes sheet white.

 _Well shit,_ Clayton thinks vaguely.

And then the Reverend's lunging backwards, grabbing for what has to be his shotgun and Clayton’s yelping “Wait wait wait-” even as Mason swings the barrel up to point at him.

(the barrel is shaking slightly)

“It’s just me, Reverend, it’s just me,” his voice still sounds awful, rough and cracking from breathing in too much soil and no other reason. 

There’s a terrible pause, Mason staring down the sights at Clayton, who has dirt and blood encrusted hands raised. 

“....the others didn’t talk,” Mason says slowly, eyes fixed on Clayton’s bare face. Clayton belatedly realizes his hat is missing, has been since-since.

(he won’t find it till much later, perched on a hat hook behind the Reverend’s door)

“Doc did,” Clayton counters automatically, and immediately winces. 

That nets him another pause, Mason’s eyes flickering across his face looking for-he didn’t know honestly. 

(he doesn’t know what he looks like yet)

Mason’s gaze lands on Clayton’s still upraised hands and stays there. 

\--

The thing that looks like Clayton Sharpe has blood and earth coating its hands. He can see what look like at least two torn nails from where he stands. 

The sight of blood should have been enough for proof, but between the strange cast to Clayton’s skin he can’t quite write off as moonlight and how his eyes gleam from the light of the lantern spilling into the doorway-well.

Clayton being a contrary bastard shouldn’t be quite this reassuring, “so did the Doc” indeed.

(hope starts to unclench behind his sternum, slow and cautious)

He steps back from the door, nodding toward the chair visible from where Clayton is still standing in the doorway. Matthew hasn’t lowered the gun, and watches warily as Clayton limps to the chair and drops into it with a nearly audible thud.

Matthew kicks the door shut and lowers the shotgun.

(“-we ask for your protection-”)

The thing that may be Clayton Sharpe does not lunge for him nor turn into a fuckin giant snake monster, so Matthew tentatively calls this a win. So far. 

Out of the dark and into the lantern light he can see Clayton better. He’s….completely fucking covered in dirt, which accounts for most of the odd cast to his face but there’s something off about how pale his eyes are.

The slightly exasperated expression Clayton is fixin’ him with is familiar under the sort of exhaustion Matthew recognizes from mirrors years past. 

“How?" is all Matthew can manage, staring at the dead man in his chair. 

"No fuckin clue," the dead man replies. He's leaning heavily against the rickety table now, strange eyes nearly shut. 

They'd done their best to clean him up, after. Matthew can see Arabella's neat stitches in Clayton's vest from where he's standing. Blood had soaked the fabric too thoroughly to fully clean, but most of it had scrubbed out. 

(miriam, hands raw from scrubbing and eyes red. arabella, fingers pricked and tears kept clear from cloth. the needles had been cold as he'd sewn up bullet holes in skin. practice was all that kept his hands steady)

Everything is covered in mud now. Matthew's gaze drifted back to the battered hands lax in Clayton's lap. 

Bile threatens to rise in his throat.

"Clayton," he asks, the name like an offering, "where did you wake up?"

Those pale, pale eyes meet his. 

"Turns out 'Coffin' was a bit too apt a name," Clayton says, and tries to smile.

The words have barely left his mouth before Matthew damn near picks him up out of the chair in a hug. He feels Clayton tense against him, can feel that he's too cool, can smell earth and old blood and that doesn't matter near as much as it should because he can feel Clayton's hands clenching on the back of his coat and can feel him start to shake, just slightly.

-

When Clayton starts to list a little too heavily into Matthew's grip he pulls back a little, shifting his hold to Clayton's shoulders. 

“How about we get you cleaned up,” Matthew says, deciding that dirt was something easily solved. All other problems could wait until morning. 

The room stays quiet as Matthew readies a pot of warm water and a clean cloth he scrounges up. A full bath would take too long to ready, and he can see Clayton falling asleep in the chair. He firmly shoves away the last time he saw Clayton with his eyes closed, which reminds him-

“Do you want me to call you Amos?”

The other man flinches awake, pale eyes wild. 

_"No!"_ the word cracks out, and Clayton looks almost startled at his own vehemence and continues quieter, “No, Clayton’s fine.”

“Alright,” Matthew replies, “Water’s ready, got a cloth here. I’ll see if I can dig up something that might fit you.”

Clayton blinks at him slowly, like he hadn’t realized that’s what Matthew had been puttering around the last ten minutes for. The mud has dried some, and flakes of it falls from Clayton’s hands as he looks down and flexes them absently. 

“Might take a few rounds,” he says almost guiltily, staring at his blood and dirt encrusted fingertips.

“There’s more than enough water and firewood,” Matthew counters, already rifling through his clothes chest. He doesn’t have much but he has an older set of clothes that might fit Clayton’s smaller form. 

He can hear the faint slosh of water and whisper of cloth on skin behind him, and he doesn’t turn around. 

He’s busying himself with setting out the chosen clothes and on to needlessly rearranging the contents of the clothes chest when he registers the utter silence behind him. Matthew turns around and Clayton is standing by the stove, shirtless, staring down at his own chest and belly, hand hovering inches from the dark stitches that close the wound that killed him. He doesn’t appear to be breathing. 

His arms and face are much cleaner, Matthew notes with the bit of his attention not preoccupied with the memory of making those stitches.

“Why’d you sew me up?” Clayton asks. _Why did you bother?_ Matthew hears.

“You’re my friend,” Matthew replies. _Because you didn’t deserve this, because you deserve respect, because it was all I could do,_ he doesn’t say.

Clayton seems to hear it anyway, nodding slowly. His eyes haven’t lifted from the dark stitches. Matthew drops the bundle of clothes in Clayton’s arms and Clayton scrambles to catch them, shooting Matthew an irate look. Matthew just smiles back, glad to see some life back in his face.

Life of any kind, really. 

-

Matthew ends up bundling them both into the bed, awkward fit be dammed and Clayton’s arguments for sleeping on the floor derailed by dint of Matthew simply picking him up and dropping him onto the mattress.

He’s going to treasure that yelp of outrage for years to come.

\--

The room is dark, and Clayton is not as warm as he should be, but he’s breathing and the blankets and iron bellied stove do their job well enough. 

The room is dark and warm, and Clayton Sharpe is asleep and breathing next to him. 

“Lord I lay me down to sleep…” Matthew begins in a voiceless whisper, and watches the warm glow of the stove until the prayer ends and he closes his eyes.

(they both lay there, breathing quietly in the warm dark)

\--

There are things he will not remember. One of these is a nightmare, had between a gunshot and an empty grave.

He is holding something in an iron grip. It burns to hold, and twists and writhes, and he cannot let go. He will not let go. If he does something Bad will happen to his (people) friends. 

The man known as Amos-Kinsley-namesandnamesandnothingtill-Clayton-Sharpe knows he is a good (scapegoat excuse lure) shield. The thing he holds burns and wails and bites.

He can feel pieces of himself in it now, as it tears him apart. He isn't bleeding, he knows, dead meat don't bleed. The thing biting him has proper sharp teeth, ain't a snake. It smells like fire and burns cold. His hands are blistering to bone.

He does not let go. 

In the nightmare time does not happen. In the nightmare, this is forever. In the nightmare, some boyhood memory surfaces, and he remembers the impact of the edge of a toy shield. 

He does not let go, but he brings the burning thing towards him, he snarls, and he bites it back.

(there is some half scrap of a demon, living inside of clayton sharpe. it did not come with his death)

\--

The following morning Arabella Whitlock opens the Reverend’s door without knocking. 

\--------


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks to the undeadwood discord for letting me yell about this for a few weeks!

\------------

He is somewhere, and that somewhere isn’t burning.

He thinks it should be though.

It’s cool and quiet instead. There’s a slow, rhythmic rush, and the walls he can’t see expand and contract, slow and steady. It feels rather like the great arches of stone he’d seen in the desert have come to life and started breathing. 

There should be something else in here though. He knows this. 

There was a Bad thing, and-

His hands flex, blistered bones creaking in blackened skin. Damp charcoal and copper is thick on his tongue.

There’s nothing else here.

There’s ash on the not-ground, and nothing is burning.

He is somewhere, and he is alone.

(he breathes, and the world breathes around him)

\----

Clayton wakes up. 

This continues to be a surprise. 

He wakes up and he doesn’t hurt. He breathes out, relief shuddering out of him like a gut punch, and agony doesn’t spike through his chest or stomach. 

He wakes up next to a snoring furnace, with an arm flung around his middle and the Reverend’s face smashed between his shoulder blades. Pale morning light filters through the window and illuminates the floorboards in a pale patch slowly creeping across the floor. 

The bed had been arranged so that the light would wake its occupant, Clayton realizes with half asleep amusement. The Reverend mumbles something in his sleep, face still pressed against his spine and arm tightening briefly around Clayton’s ribs. He thinks he can feel drool to go with the damp warmth of his breath. 

Clayton doesn’t move for several long minutes, watching the morning light creep toward them, any guilt or shame drowned by the warmth smothering the chill of the grave. 

\--

The sun in his face is what wakes Matthew. He doesn’t move, quietly thinking over the odd dream. His nightmares were usually more bloody, not a strange, hopeful grief made manifest. 

He needs to get up, though, and something already smells of coffee-

“You awake, Reverend?”

Matthew is off the bed with his fists up before the owner of the voice registers. 

Clayton watches him from the table, eyebrow raised. There’s a steaming mug on the table next to Matthew’s disassembled shotgun, Clayton having apparently taken upon himself to clean it. 

Clayton shrugs one shoulder when he sees where Matthew is looking, looking almost sheepish.

“Wanted to keep m’self busy. Y’alright there, Reverend?”

“Ah, yes,” Matthew says, belatedly lowering his fists. A sharp surprise wakes a man quite thoroughly, and he might not even need the coffee he can smell on the stove. He can see Clayton better in the morning light. The man is still a bit too pale, but it might be mistaken for a natural tone if Matthew hadn’t known him-before. He hadn’t realized Clayton’d had-has freckles, now stark in paler skin. His already bright blue eyes were even paler than they had been. But he looks alive, chest rising and falling steadily and faint amusement crinkling the skin around his eyes. 

Matthew scrubs a hand over the nape of his neck. “Good morning?” He offers, and this, of course, is when Arabella opens the door. 

\--

There’s a dead man sitting in Reverend Matthew’s kitchen. 

This wasn’t actually Arabella’s first thought, which was simply surprise that the Reverend had a guest. The second was worry she’d just walked into something private.

That’s when she recognizes the other man’s face, so much more open when not shadowed under the brim of a hat. 

Mason grabs her wrist as she scrambles to start a spell. She forgets how quick he can move for a man his size. 

“It’s him, Arabella!”

“The hell it is!” She barks back, wrenching her hand free. Mason doesn’t try to grab her again, just shifts so he’s partially between her and Cla-and the whatever at the table. He doesn’t try to block her view of it though, knows better than that by now.

The snakes weren’t the only thing they’ve dealt with in recent months, which makes Mason’s defense all the more strange.

The dead thing at the table is just watching them, expression resigned. It had looked relieved when it first saw her, she realizes. 

Cynthia’s dear, dead face twisted in hate and nothing like recognition flashes in her mind’s eye, but she can’t-doesn’t see that in whatever the hell is wearing the body of Clayton Sharpe or Amos Kinsley or whoever the hell he was. 

He mostly looks tired. 

Something cold and jealous and curious rears its head in her, and she lowers her hands. 

“How?”

\--

_Curiosity is gonna get this woman killed someday,_ Clayton thinks, watching that same wild eyed gleam he’d seen in her when she spoke of the occult override justifiable wariness he wishes she’d keep. 

“Woke up in my coffin, dug out. Was just last night, no idea what happened,” he says, cutting off whatever gentler way he could see Matthew gearing up to describe it.

Arabella frowns.

“You look mighty good for a man three months dead.”

What.

“What?” Clayton rasps, suddenly dry throat clicking. 

“I hadn’t thought about that,” Matthew murmurs, and shrugs when Arabella shoots him a look. 

“Three months,” Clayton repeats. He’s seen corpses before, of course, seen ‘em minutes to decades old, and-

He looks down at his hands. He shouldn’t even have _skin_ after three months, much less fully intact skin with veins visible underneath and he can see muscle flex around bone as he curls his hands into fists and uncurls them and there’s still fine hair on his forearms and back of his hands and all of this should be slime and leather and dry bone and he can feel his impossible heartbeat accelerating-

And then arms are pulling him upright and against a broad chest and Matthew is telling him to breathe with him and Clayton wants to laugh because he’s _three fucking months dead_ he shouldn’t even have lungs to breathe _with_ but he does and he can’t-

A small hand presses between his shoulder blades above Matthew’s, and Arabella is mumbling something he can’t make out and eventually between the two of them he breathes. 

\--

Clayton finally pulls away, face tilted down slightly in a way that would’ve hidden the faint flush in his cheeks had he still been wearing his hat. Matthew lets him go, keeping his gaze on Arabella, whose expression had gone very strange. 

“I take it you hadn’t known?” She crosses her arms, shifting back onto her heels.

Clayton lets out a humorless bark of laughter, dragging his hand across his face.

“No, I can’t say I did.”

Arabella hums, and pulls out a bundle of sage from one of her myriad pockets. 

“Uh-” Matthew starts.

“Don't you start with me, you should’ve done this, I know you have sage and I’ve shown you how,” Arabella snaps, stalking to the still lit stove. Clayton just watches, confusion evident.

“Done what, if you don’t mind my askin’?”

“Just a purification spell, nothin you should have to worry about,” Arabella says, drawl honey thick and sickly sweet. Clayton, sensibly, looks somewhat alarmed, but stays put as the sage starts to burn. 

He stays still the entire time, and there’s no burning nor strange shadows on the walls or anything else like the handful of times Matthew had seen the spell effect something. Clayton just sneezes violently, looking mortified every time. 

“Well,” Arabella says, looking almost disappointed, “You don’t seem to be possessed.”

“Yay.” Clayton replies flatly. Matthew muffles a snort of laughter. 

She hums, watching the pair of them. 

“I’m getting Miriam.”

\----

Miriam’s first action upon seeing him is to slap his across the face hard enough his ears ring before cussing him out for being a damn fool up one way and down the other. 

Clayton takes it, eyes lowered until her voice cracks in the middle and he looks up and she’s crying and he awkwardly half lifts his arms and then he’s getting dragged down into a hug, face smashed into a bony shoulder. 

She’s still swearing at him, voice rough and terribly fond. 

Something in him aches, because he knew these people for three days but-

(someday, his mother says, carding fingers through his hair, you will fall in love with someone-ah ah, don’t scrunch your nose at me, young man. someday, you will fall in love with someone in a few minutes or hours, and they’ll be yours to look after, to love. it isn’t always the kissy love that you’re giving me that look over, dear heart, sometimes it will be…..a new sister, or brother, or best friend. 

And if you’re very blessed, Amos, it will happen more than once)

\----

The explanation is only barely easier the third time, if only ‘cause he has people to do most of the talking for him. 

Miriam keeps staring at him like if she blinks he’ll vanish. Arabella is much the same, if significantly warier.

They talk late into the afternoon, three months a long time to miss. Swearengen kept offering them jobs, which they would sometimes accept. They’ve apparently become something of a go to for the weirder shit that keeps cropping up. 

Clayton thinks they’re bullshitting him about the thing with the troll until Matthew shows him the still raw scar.  
Arabella’s studies in the occult have deepened, if only out of sheer self defense. Clayton isn’t as surprised as he feels he should be over the fact that the Reverend has picked up some of it too. 

Neither she not the Reverend call on the Dealer much, anymore. 

He doesn’t ask about Aloysius, but Miriam tells him he left town.

“So as far as everyone knows, Amos Kinsley is dead,” Arabella says, watching him freeze at the name. “What were you trying to tell Aloysius, before...?” She’s kind enough not to finish her sentence.

“It don’t matter-”

“Clayton.”

“......I didn’t do it, was a frame up job.”

The room goes quieter than his grave was.

“What.” The Reverend says, voice dark. 

Clayton shrugs, “Fell in with the wrong crowd, someone who shouldn’t’ve got killed, pinned it on me. Been runnin’ ever since.”

“How long?” Miriam asks. Her hand is covering her mouth, and she’s looking at him like he’s something that deserves sympathy. 

“Fifteen years.” He looks down at the table. He kind of wants to clean the shotgun again, if only to busy his hands, but Matthew had put it back together hours ago.

“Clayton,” Miriam says slowly, voice very strange, “How old were you?”

“Old enou-”

“Clayton.”

“................sixteen,” he tells the table. It’s a solid old thing, must’ve been a left over from the previous preacher. There’s some cigarette burns in one corner. 

Arabella makes a very soft noise. Miriam’s fingers abruptly fold around his wrist in an iron grip. He looks up, blankest expression he can manage fixed over his face. It shouldn’t be hard, these are old, old wounds but the expressions on his friend’s face start to scrape them raw. 

“I’ve done worse enough that would’a earned me that same fate, Miriam,” he says, defensive. Defending what, he isn’t sure. Matthew opens his mouth like he’s going to say something then appears to think better of it.

“Then it should’ve been for that not for, for something that you didn’t do,” she snaps, and takes a deep breath. “What’s done is done, and you’re here.”

He doesn’t know how to reply. The silence stretches before Arabella, bless her heart, picks up the reins of the conversation and pulls it to lighter topics. 

\--

(why didn’t you shoot him, miriam asks much later. because I didn’t want to kill my friend, he replies)

\--

Arabella eventually has to leave, citing her husband might actually notice if she comes home any later. Miriam follows. At some point it was decided without Clayton’s input that he would be staying with the Reverend. 

Before she leaves Miriam grips his arm, staring up into his face. 

“Whoever, whatever you are, Clayton Sharpe, thank you for coming back,” she says, and squeezes his arm before she turns and sets down the stairs, leaving him frozen in the Reverend’s doorway. 

He only closes the door when he realizes how much of the cold is getting in. 

\----

(why you? arabella will ask, months and weeks later. 

I don’t know, he’ll reply. bad or good luck, happenstance, that a couple of bullet holes are easier to fix to make whatever I am. I don’t know.

I think there was a demon, I think it’s me now, he’ll never say.

I’m not sure if I’m me or not, he will say, one day. 

I don’t think a not-you would worry about that, will be the reply)

\----

“Swearengen gave you a job?” 

Matthew hums an assent, digging through his pack. The girls had just left, and the late afternoon sun is coming through the windows behind him. 

“It can be a bit more reliable than donations,” he says, shooting him a wry smile, “This should be fairly simple, mostly scaring off some fellas from digging where they really shouldn’t be.”

“May I accompany you?”

Matthew looks up at him, and Clayton isn’t sure what he’s looking for but apparently he sees it because he nods.

-

“You kept my guns?” 

Clayton isn’t sure why he’s so startled, it’s more practical than putting them in the ground. The Reverend looks almost embarrassed, pulling them from the box he’d been keeping them in.

“Yeah uh, I ‘avne’t gotten any more munitions for ‘em though,” he says, drawl slipping into something that reminded Clayton of his mother’s brogue, ears starting to turn red. 

“We can procure those at Tolliver’s,” Clayton says.

“Y’know you don’t ‘ave-”

“I know.”

Matthew sighs. 

“Let me find you a coat.”

\----

Turns out at least one of the local hoopleheads has both an itchy trigger finger and a goddamn good memory for faces of folks who should be in the ground, and an apparent urge to reintroduce said folks to the concept.

They’d been heading toward Tolliver’s, Clayton’s shoulders hunched under Matthew’s old wool coat. He looks small in it, and he carries himself differently from how Matthew remembers. 

He’s still thinking over the difference posture makes when he hears a gunshot and Clayton stumbles, hand flying to his side.

Matthew actually stops dead for a moment, too stunned to move. A second shot startles him back into moving, grabbing Clayton’s unoccupied arm.

(he would really like to stop seeing his friend get shot in the thoroughfare)

The setting sun lines the world with orange and red as Matthew drags them into an alley behind some boxes, another bullet cracking against the wooden siding. The dumbass must’ve gotten a very lucky shot.

Clayton is swearing, hand clamped to his side where the bullet had gone in. Matthew swears as well, yanking fabric out of the way to see how bad the wound is (not again) and readies himself for a card draw-

There’s no blood.

Matthew stares. The injury is there, the bullet had torn a furrow just below Clayton’s ribs, and something thick and dark is leaking from it but the amount and color and consistency is. Wrong. 

Clayton's cussing peters off, and he's staring at his side with the same bewilderment Mason is sure is painted across his own face. Matthew chances a look up to properly read Clayton's expression and-

Clayton's eyes are fogged over white.

Matthew is not proud of the noise he makes and nearly gets clocked in the face by Clayton's elbow as he jerks in alarm.

"What is it?" Clayton demands, twisting awkwardly to see the injury better. 

"Uh," Matthew says, still staring at Clayton's face.

"What in the hell," Clayton mumbles, looking a little wild around the eyes as he takes in the thick, dark blood just barely smearing the skin around the bullet wound. "Did they miss-" 

Matthew shakes off the shock and grabs Clayton's fingers when he seems them curl toward the injury like he means to rip the blood right out of him. His eyes are still that unsettling white but the terror creeping into the edges of his face before the stoic mask slams back down makes Matthew stomp down on the fear icing his spine from the blind gaze Clayton fixes him with.

“You’re hit, don’t touch it.”

Another bullet cracks into the wood above their heads, causing both of them to flinch. Matthew looks at the much too little blood at Clayton’s side and swears again and yanks his glove off. 

“Reverend?” Clayton’s voice tilts toward wary as Matthew pulls his knife from its sheath, but he doesn’t otherwise react. 

(later, matthew is going to think about trust)

He does try to grab Matthew’s hand when he sees what Matthew means to do, but pain makes him slow. The knife slashes across the meat of Matthew’s palm, bright red blood welling from the cut and he presses his hand over Clayton’s wound, ignoring the barked yelp of pain, intent of smearing as much bright blood as possible around the injury as he can. 

He’s distantly thankful Clayton is wearing a pale shirt before he deems the ruse sufficient and yanks his glove back on. He’s not stupid enough to stick his head out of cover but he does turn in the general direction of the shots to bellow-

“He’s bleeding, you great idiots! The dead don’t bleed!”

Clayton doesn’t flinch beside him.

The shout does its work, and there’s a halt to the gunfire. 

“How we know you ain’t-” the man starts before he’s cut off by a bellow from Sheriff Bullock, shown up at last.

“What in the hell do you think you’re doing!”

“Killin some undead fuck!” The hooplehead has the gall to say.

“Saw you shootin’ at the Reverend, put your damn guns down!” Bullock barked. 

Matthew glances down at the bloodied shirt, and then back up to Clayton’s still pale eyes. 

“Keep your eyes mostly shut, they’re all glassed over white right now, and lean on me,” he hisses, and pulls Clayton’s arm over his shoulder. 

\--

Clayton fully expects to get shot again when they stumble into the street, one hand clamped over an injury that ain’t fucking bleeding and covered in the Reverend’s blood and the other flung over the Reverend’s too damn tall shoulders, making him hunch awkwardly. 

Bullock gives them a quick once over from where he’s standing about twenty feet away, clocking the bright red blood on Clayton’s shirt. 

“That’s no undead,” he says, and stalks toward the dipshits a couple of buildings down. Clayton has never been gladder for the length of his hair or the distinct way Clayton “the Coffin” Sharpe dressed. 

(on purpose and out of hard learned practice, faces can be so easy to forget with the right hat)

“Taking ‘im to the doc’s!” Matthew calls to Bullock, who gives an absent wave from where he’s corralled the two hoopleheads. He can hear them yowling about the undead, and keeps his head low. 

_Glassed over eyes,_ he thinks, and blinks hard. 

\--

They don’t go to the doc’s.

\--

He still isn’t bleeding by the time they get into the Reverend's place, and the burning agony has subsided into a strange, heavy ache.

Clayton has no goddamn idea if his eyes are still weird.

“We need to get your hand fixed,” he says, vividly aware of the blood that’s started to drip from Matthew’s glove.

“Sit the fuck down,” Matthew replies. Clayton sits. It doesn’t actually hurt that bad now, just extremely unpleasant. He cautiously lifts his shirt to look and the gouge is now a raw red line, sealed over like its days old instead of minutes. 

They both stare.

“Well,” Clayton says, voice even, “Guess we get to fix your hand first after all.”

\--

“You still want to go on the job?” Matthew says through gritted teeth at the needle bites through his skin. 

Clayton’s hands are steady as he replies an affirmative. 

“Sitting around here won’t do me much good.”

His eyes had changed back while Matthew had dug out the medical supplies, gone from white back to pupiled blue between one blink and the next. 

Clayton insisted that he’d been able to see fine the whole time, and they’d figure it out later. Matthew didn’t press. 

Blood drips steadily onto old cloth. The stitches are neat and small, and a near match for the ones on Clayton’s chest.

“I’ll find you a horse and we can head out soon.”

Clayton hums, and ties off the string.

\----

The Reverend procures a spare horse from…somewhere (Clayton doesn’t ask) and they head out in the dark.

Clayton finds himself taking the lead. The night is brighter than the half moon should account for, everything lit up silver and grey. The white of the snow only helps, thought it makes strange shapes of trees, spindly forms reaching for the pitch black sky like iron spikes. It’s snowing very lightly, dusting the Reverend’s leather jacket as he pulls alongside him.

There’s something visibly easy and relaxed in the other man, perched on the back of a horse, riding slowly in the night.

Neither of them speak, content to ride in quiet.

\--

They bed down about a half mile from where Swearengen directions tell them the camp should be, making plans to go in in the early dawn. It should be about a half dozen men, and Swearengen wants them gone before they wake up something nastier than the snakes. 

They make a small fire, lighting the snow around them warm orange. 

“Clayton?”

He grunts in reply, bundled in a blanket as near the fire as he can be, clutching his mug of soup. 

“Could you hold this for a moment?”

Clayton blinks, looking up. Matthew is holding out his rosary. 

Oh.

Matthew doesn’t look nervous, just calm and expectant, dark eyes reflecting bits of firelight. Clayton swallows, strips off his glove and holds his hand out.

Matthew gently drops the cross and beads into his palm.

He’s half expecting burning, for his skin to blister (like in his drea-) or smoke or anything but the simple feeling of air chilled wood and metal, slowly warming from his skin in his open hand. 

He stares at the innocuous cluster of beads and crucifix for a long moment, and inexplicably feels his eyes water. 

“You seemed concerned, still,” Matthew says, voice low and terribly gentle. He doesn’t move to take the rosary back and Clayton curls his fingers around it, drawing his hand back into the blanket. He scrubs his eyes, swearing quietly about the cold.

“And if I had started burnin’ Reverend?” He asks, voice a bit too rough. 

He can hear the blanket the other man has wrapped around himself shift as he shrugs and says, “Would’ve grabbed it back and kept you away from holy objects, most likely.”

Clayton stares. 

Matthew just smiles back.

“You’re a damn fool, you know that?”

“So I’ve been told,” Matthew replies amiably. “Now, lets get some sleep, early day tomorrow.”

\----

They indeed get an early start, and when they come upon the camp most everyone is mostly asleep. 

Of course, because Clayton’s luck is shit, it goes a bit wrong. 

\--

Everything is shouts and the occasional shotgun blast and too many people in a small clearing tripping over the unlucky bastards who went down first. Clayton can see the Reverend holding his own even as he fires his own pistols (four-three to go) and then there’s a big bastard in front of him and both of his fuckin’ guns jam.

He sees the glint of a bowie knife and-

Getting stabbed fucking hurts. He still doesn’t fucking bleed much, but it still hurts and the blade is goddamn well seated between his ribs and grating against bone and slicing into the already shredded membrane of his heart-

Teeth bared, Clayton drops a pistol and yanks the knife out, a scream caught behind his teeth as he feels the serrated edge catch on bone and muscle with the same shrill vibrating agony of a poorly tuned fiddle. The blade comes out pitch black with his blood and he slashes it across the throat of the smug bastard who’d just stabbed him and been stupid enough to let the knife go as Clayton staggered back.

Fucker barely had time to look surprised before the corpse drops to the ground, throat gaping. Clayton spits before looking up, bloodied knife still clenched in his hand.

He looks up just in time to see the Reverend level his shotgun with a man’s head and pull the trigger. Brain and blood and bits of skull scatter across muddy snow and the body lands with a wet thump.

Clayton stares, cold prickling up the back of his own skull. Some visceral instinct says that will kill him, if nothing else will. 

Good to know.

\--

“Now,” the Reverend says, dropping into a crouch by the sole survivor, a crooked half smile resting on his face, “I heard tell that there’s some more of you bright sons of bitches lookin’ to come back out here. Did I hear that right?”

The man stares up at him from where he’s pressed against a tree, clutching a bleeding leg. His eyes are huge, whites showing in a face pale enough to match the snow around him. Clayton eyes the pool of blood beneath him and figures nothing vital’s been hit.

The man doesn’t reply, wild eyes flickering between the Reverend and Clayton, like he’s not quite sure if he should be more afraid of the big fella with the shotgun who’s smiling at him, or the other fella watching with a whited out eyes in a still face, pistols drawn and a knife wound in his heart. He displays the first bit of sense of this lot and seems to be more frightened of the Reverend. 

The Reverend taps the man on the leg with the tip of the shotgun barrel.

“Now son, I asked you a question. Did I or did I not hear that y’all might come back on out here.”

“N-no,” the man replies, voice trembling like a lightweight’s hands six whiskey shots in.

“No y’all won’t be coming back out?” The Reverend’s head is cocked slightly, an eyetooth visible in the half smile still settled on his face. It’s an easy expression on him, something dark and eager just visible past the surface.

“W-w-we won’t come, no, please-”

“Alright then,” he stands abruptly, and the man flinches back into the tree hard enough that Clayton hears the _thock_ of dense skull on wood. “There should be a horse somewhere around here, you let your friends know.”

“Ye-yes.”

“Clayton,” the Reverend rumbles, gaze caught on Clayton’s chest, “Let’s get that seen to.”

Clayton nods, letting Matthew lead the way to their horses, leaving a shivering mess of a man in a clearing full of corpses behind them.

\----

There’s a rumor that the Reverend Mason hangs out with some sort of Lazarus, fella who got back up after being shot dead in the street. 

The name “Coffin” turned out to be too accurate, some mutter out of the Reverend’s hearing. Out of the Coffin’s hearing too. He ain’t like the flesh stripped things from some months ago, and hangs out at the Gem with the folks who usually take care of the nasty shit, so most folk ain’t too bothered. There’s been enough weird shit that no one’s gonna raise a fuss over a quiet fella who pays his tab and don’t cause trouble.

The ones who do fuss end up at the short end of Mrs Landisman, Mrs Whitlock or the Reverend’s tempers. No one’s actually sure which is the worst. 

(someone laughs once, about their grave digger of a priest and his coffin. just once)

\--

Life goes on.

\--

Clayton Sharpe stands in front of a grave. 

There’s snow on the ground, wiping away evidence of the disturbed earth beneath it. He stays clear of where he knows the casket is, some part of him convinced that if he steps forward he’ll fall back in. 

The Reverend replaced the marker last week, and all it reads now is _‘Amos Kinsley’_. Very few people come out here, he’d said, no one was going to notice the change but them, and the marker may as well be accurate. 

The plot before him seems so small. Fitting, for the ghost of a terrified sixteen year old boy. 

Clayton stays for a while, watching the snow pile higher on the wooden marker. 

Then he turns away, and walks down the hill toward the church.

He can see the lit window from here. 

\------------------------


End file.
